Shanghai Writers’ Association currently has almost 1800 members from all walks of life. The Association is divided into the following specializations: novels, poetry, children’s literature, prose, foreign literature, theory, films and plays, as well as classical literature. It also publishes magazines including Harvest (bi-monthly), Shanghai Literature (monthly), The Bud (monthly), Si Nan Literary Journal(bi-monthly) and Shanghai Culture (bi-monthly). Besides, it has two literary website: www.myhuayu.com and www.yunwenxue.com.
Hosted by Shanghai Writers’ Association, The Shanghai Writing Program invites several internationally acclaimed writers to spend two months in Shanghai, China. This residency program, is an annual event which first began in 2008, to date we have hosted 100 writers from over 40 countries.
It is our hope that the international writers will be inspired by their exposure to Chinese culture and Shanghai literature while living in Shanghai. To further this aim, we will host a series of literary events, with a view to introducing the guest writers to the city and the people of Shanghai.
A panel of acclaimed Shanghai writers will curate our selection process. All applicants are invited to submit their literary biography and a photo by email to,
huph111@163.com.
Applicants should also send samples of their work by post. We suggest one or two books (English language version if available).
Cities have emerged as hubs of human interaction, facilitating the exchange of not just goods but also words, desires, and memories. Over time, they have evolved into bustling centers where people come together, sharing both their joys and sorrows. Your city and mine exist at such a vast distance from each other that they appear invisible, seemingly disconnected. However, with your arrival, these two distant cities will eventually catch sight of each other, extending warm greetings and sharing the secrets of their people’s happy inhabitation. As a writer, you serve as the witness to and bearer of the secrets, bridging the gap between these far-flung urban landscapes. We eagerly anticipate your role as the messenger, connecting places that remain distant from each other. Furthermore, we anticipate your assistance in providing us with a unique perspective, one that enables us to reflect on ourselves from a remote vantage point.
“Community” is a notion that transcends sociology, culture, and literature. When the American scholar Benedict Anderson talked about the emergence of nationalism with the notion of imagined communities, we could hardly expect that the discussions on “community” could become so profound, and its boundaries could be continuously extended. In today’s complicated world, the imagination of communities has been faced with difficulties brought about by factors including international politics, cultural identity, national consciousness, identity anxiety, and accelerating daily life. As a way of observing and narrating the world, writers of literatures have shown a long-lasting and sustained enthusiasm and creativity for identity communities, emotional communities, and national communities. The difficulty lies in that when the imagined communities are accomplished, the conversations between different communities become barriered. Are different languages, mindsets, moralities and customs, for writers, wealth of nature or unavoidable obstacles? As a member of a certain community, a writer may speak to, discuss with, understand, and accept other communities, which becomes a matter of subtlety. When we talk about communities today, do we aim at seeking mutual understanding or do we just look for room for expression? Is real understanding possible?
In this city, sounds can be heard everywhere: the engines of the cars, with the friction of the tyres on the ground; the outdoor units of the air-conditioners, with their fans spinning swiftly to let in and out the hot and the cool air; the escalators, with their conveyor belts moving up- and downwards without a stop; the running underground trains, with the surface of the roads trembling; the motors on the elevated ring roads, with the heavens echoing their roaring; the ramming from the construction sites, with the operation of the tower cranes; indoors, the electric drills whine their way into the walls; on the small backstreets, marble is cut and polished, with the air filled with its dust; the cooking oil sizzles in the fryers at the snack booths; the meat grinders are turned on; the sirens are sounded on the Huangpu River; the airplanes fly over it; the loudspeakers, to boot, which shout to the streets that the sales of the commodities are about to come to an end…. All the sounds are reflected from the buildings and then to them again. Indeed, the modern city is a maze of echoing walls. In the numerous reflections, the original sounds are amplified, transmitted, and intensified, so that the increasing volume, whose decibel is beyond measurement, makes impossible our hearing. How can the acoustic meatus, a fleshy part of the human being, stand such a strong impact? So gradually, there grow calluses, and our ears get blunted.
We, as Writers of Words, Makers of Fiction, emit sounds that are only too soft, too delicate, as if they were as loud as a needle falling aground. But from the fall of this needle, we can perhaps hear, if we hold our breath and be all ears, a faint sound of refreshing coolness, which travels through the walls to us to comfort our blunted senses, to keep their natural texture soft and tender, and to create a world of tranquility amidst the sound and fury of the city.
Judging by my experience as a writer, writing is surely a lonely endeavour. It is done entirely in solitude and in a confined space. By this I do not mean the substance of writing, which no doubt is filled with lively personalities or events, propelled by plethora social and historical conditions, but rather the process of writing itself. You sit alone at your desk, facing the blank page, with a cup of tea, and perhaps a cigarette, the last of which is almost being banished altogether, however, in this age of smoking bans. Then you are beckoned, into a state of pensiveness, if those few physical items work their magic. The remembered realities take on a new form in your contemplation, void of existential basis, as it were. Or the basis is changed, becoming you, the lone writer, who harness all your characters and see them through till they meet their destinies. You feel the sheer weight of responsibility; and tremendous humility. As your work takes form in words, they are transferred in their multitude from manuscript to the printed page, and eventually presented to the reading public. Yet before this happens, it is only you, alone with your words in a room; its space as tiny as barely fitting a desk, or immense and infinite, a portal to unbounded imagination.
Precisely because writing is such lonely work, we need the “Writing Program” to gather writers from far-flung parts of the earth, to converge, to engage in dialogue, or at the very least, to assure each other that we share something in common and that we, in totality, are not solitary and few, but are part of a world of broadened horizons.
You have come to China's city Shanghai each bearing your own mother tongue, but then converse in English. English, once a regional mother tongue, is now a global language. Without it, it is barely possible to travel abroad. As a consequence, very many sentences have become subject to the same grammaitical rules and much vocabulary has been absorbed into a universal and common usage. Pronunciations and voices have disappeared. The resonance of throat, vocal chords and palate formed by those voices has degenerated. For all that this world of ours is a babble, in fact it operates in simple tones on a single frequency. So we hope, hope above all, to hear you read in your mother tongue. Our mother tongue is the womb of literature. Yet in this globalised age it is also a literary enclave of the air. So let the air above Shanghai resound with many, many voices.
You have come to China's city Shanghai each bearing your own mother tongue, but then converse in English. English, once a regional mother tongue, is now a global language. Without it, it is barely possible to travel abroad. As a consequence, very many sentences have become subject to the same grammaitical rules and much vocabulary has been absorbed into a universal and common usage. Pronunciations and voices have disappeared. The resonance of throat, vocal chords and palate formed by those voices has degenerated. For all that this world of ours is a babble, in fact it operates in simple tones on a single frequency. So we hope, hope above all, to hear you read in your mother tongue. Our mother tongue is the womb of literature. Yet in this globalised age it is also a literary enclave of the air. So let the air above Shanghai resound with many, many voices.
欢迎你的时时刻刻与我们的汇合，仿佛溪流汇入江河，一同流淌，在下一个岔道再分离，就这样，你中有了我， 我中有了你。
2013上海写作计划的主题是“呼吸”，来自印度、爱尔兰、阿根廷、比利时、葡萄牙、尼日利亚、美国、墨西哥、澳大利亚的九位作家参与了本次文学盛会。
来自美国、德国、希腊、韩国、保加利亚、波黑、瑞典等七个国家的9位作家参加“2012上海写作计划”。
来自法国、英国、爱尔兰、墨西哥等7个国家参加“2011上海写作计划”。
参加“2010年上海写作计划”的外国作家分别是匈牙利小说家阿提拉·巴提斯；古巴散文家、小说家和文学批评家安娜·玛格丽塔·马提奥·帕尔默；古巴小说家劳尔·弗洛雷斯·伊里亚泰；以色列小说家本尼·巴尔巴什先生和柯利尔·津萨贝尔；德国小说家蒂娜·西贝尔；瑞典诗人、小说家比吉塔·林克韦斯特。
参加“2009上海写作计划”的外国作家分别是英国作家欧大旭、挪威作家拉格纳·霍夫兰德、希腊作家亚历克斯·斯坦麦提斯、爱尔兰作家科纳·克里顿和莲娜·苏里梵。
参加“2009上海写作计划”的外国作家分别是Chino Yukiko 、Madeleine Thien、Gail Jones。